独当局、右派陰謀論者集団「ドイツ王国」を強制捜査 「疑似国家」運営

【ベルリンＡＦＰ＝時事】ドイツ当局は１３日、「ドイツ王国（ケーニクライヒ・ドイチュラント）」と呼ばれる過激派グループを活動禁止とし、全国各地で強制捜査を実施して同グループの主要メンバー４人を逮捕した。（写真は、ドイツ東部ビッテンベルクで、「ドイツ王国」の正面ゲートの前を歩くペーター・フィツェック容疑者）
　「ドイツ王国」は、現在のドイツ連邦共和国の正統性を否定する「帝国臣民（ライヒスビュルガー）」として知られる右派陰謀論運動の一派。
　拘束された主要メンバーには、「ドイツ王国」の「国王」を自称するペーター・フィツェック容疑者（５９）も含まれている。フィツェック容疑者は元シェフで空手インストラクター。同容疑者が創設した「ドイツ王国」は、約６０００人のメンバーがいると主張している。
　「ドイツ王国」と関係のある７州で、治安要員約８００人による家宅捜索が行われた。
　内務省は、「ドイツ王国」が「疑似的な国家構造・機関」を樹立し、独自の通貨や身分証明書を発行し、メンバー向けの保険制度を運営していると指摘。
　ドイツ連邦共和国の「自由民主主義な秩序を攻撃した」として、同グループの解散を宣言した。
　「帝国臣民」は長らく不満分子や変わり者として軽視されてきたが、過激化を強め、ドイツ当局から安全保障上の脅威と見なされている。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2025/05/14-18:01）

German authorities on Tuesday banned an extremist group called the Kingdom of Germany, raided multiple locations nationwide and arrested four of its leading members.
The group is part of a right-wing conspiracy theorist movement known as the Citizens of the Reich (Reichsbuerger), which rejects the legitimacy of the modern German republic.
Among those detained was the group's self-proclaimed king Peter Fitzek, 59, a former chef and karate instructor. He founded the organisation, which has claimed to have about 6,000 members.
Long dismissed as malcontents and oddballs, the Reichsbuerger have become increasingly radicalised and are considered a security threat by German authorities.
About 800 security forces searched properties in seven states linked to the group, known in German as Koenigreich Deutschland.
The interior ministry said that the group had established pseudo-state structures and institutions, issuing its own currency and identity papers and running an insurance scheme for its members.
The ministry declared the dissolution of the group, which it accused of attacking the liberal democratic order of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said that the members of the group had created a 'counter-state' in our country and built up economic criminal structures.
Authorities said the association had financed itself primarily through prohibited banking and insurance transactions for its members as well as donations.
The Federal Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe said Fitzek was arrested along with three other suspected ringleaders of the group, which was classified as a criminal organisation.
- 'Supreme sovereign' -
As the so-called supreme sovereign, Fitzek had control and decision-making power in all key areas, the Prosecutor's Office said.
The 'Kingdom of Germany' considers itself a sovereign state within the meaning of international law and strives to extend its claimed 'national territory' to the borders of the German Empire of 1871, it added in a statement.
Fitzek, who once ran unsuccessfully to enter parliament, anointed himself as king in 2012 in an elaborate ceremony complete with a crown and sceptre.
He told AFP in an interview in 2023 that founding the organisation was the only answer to the mass manipulation he saw in German society.
His followers tend to be people with a pioneering spirit who want to make a positive change in this world, Fitzek told AFP in Wittenberg, the group's original base in eastern Germany.
In Tuesday's raids, police searched locations in the states of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia.
Dobrindt said no major weapons have been seized so far, but he insisted that the members of the group are not harmless nostalgics.
There were around 23,000 members of the Reichsbuerger movement in 2022, according to Germany's domestic intelligence agency.
More than 2,000 of them were considered potentially violent.
While Reichsbuerger members subscribe to an ideology similar to that of the Kingdom of Germany, the movement is made up of many disparate groups.
In 2022, members of a group including an ex-MP and former soldiers were arrested over a plot to attack parliament, overthrow the government and install aristocrat and businessman Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss as head of state.
Another high-profile case saw a group of Reichsbuerger members charged with plotting to kidnap the then health minister, Karl Lauterbach, in protest at Covid-19 restrictions.